Heat up your house, lower your costs
This winter will see a considerable increase in fuel prices across the board that will hit us all, pushing up fuel poverty across the country (those spending more than 10% of their income on just keeping warm — estimated at as many as 160,000 households). You may not be in a position to shore up the walls with insulation or make other toe-curling investments, but there are plenty of ways to get proactive with smaller spends before that perpetual chill arrives.
Improving comfort levels without dramatically driving up bills has two key elements. It’s a matter of generating heat as economically and consistently throughout the house, and then retaining that heat as effectively as possible. Start with a low-cost DIY odyssey, with immediate benefits, plus a daintier, CO2 footprint as a cosy reward to your conscience as well as your pocket.
Good habits cost nothing. If you have single glazing, curtains are effective insulators when properly used. Check they are flush to the recess around the window, and not draped over your radiators neatly conducting heat to the window space. If there is an interior windowsill, set them on this to form a neat seal. There’s a reason curtains are termed window-dressings. Try swapping them out with heavier, lined curtains to match the season.
Open-plan? Shut any door to cooler areas, including upstairs, which can pull air through the house, creating draughts.
A heavy door curtain across the inside of a terminally-draughty front door is a 19th century solution for sound and heat insulation. Set on a brass pole, you can try anything from an attractive blanket to redundant curtains, or go for a dedicated thermal material.
We’re not suggesting you shiver yourself warm, but there’s something to be said for donning another light cardigan rather than boiling up oil or gas. Turn the thermostat down by one degree Celsius, to 21ºC, and you can reduce your house heating bill by a staggering 10%. The difference to comfort levels will be imperceptible and a cooler house (18-21°C) is intrinsically healthier.
A thermostatic radiator valve (TRV) will deliver some measure of thermal control, especially if you don’t have the luxury of zoned control. €20-€75 depending on detailing (ex-installation), TRVs will ensure a low level of heat to beat condensation and pipe freezes in spare rooms.
18ºC set on your controls, or TRVs, is perfect for bedrooms, with the heating shutting off 30 minutes before lights out.
Set the hot water cylinder to no more (but no less) than 60°. Less than 60°C can invite unhealthy bacteria to breed unchecked in your system.
If it’s not factory-insulated, and has a jacket less than 80mm, your immersion tank is one big jolly kettle. Prices for lagging products start at €15, and standard sizes are 900mm x 450mm and 1050mm x 450mm. Measure the tank around the widest point, and from top to bottom, before purchasing.
For radiators on external walls, use a commercial radiator board covered in reflective foil to bounce heat back into the room, rather than heating the heavy masonry wall. You can buy panels individually from most good DIY stores from €10-15.
If you are not using any of your fireplaces, block draughts and heat loss with an ingenious Irish-designed flue blocker, the chimney balloon. Prices range from €25-€39, including an inflation tube and P&P, and non-standard sizes can be ordered (www.chimneyballoons.ie).
Detailing your heating system with dedicated controls can be done incrementally. Start with two things, the immersion and TVRs. A ‘countdown’ timer (30 minutes, and one- and two-hour periods) for the immersion will set you back around €80, but will pay for itself in months. Try www.switchcraft.ie.
Going a step further from reflective panels, engineered radiator panels can spin air more effectively up and into the room. Fit them yourself or have the entire house professionally-detailed. Suppliers include Cork Radiator Covers, www.corkradiatorcovers.ie, who offer the work from €300 for a typical three-bed semi-d. Self-fit Heatkeeper panels start at €30 for a five-pack. You’ll need 2-2.5 per standard radiator (www.esbstore.ie).
€50 can buy a lot of self-adhesive weather strips and pipe sleeves. Look for air bleeds around doors, and tighten the seal with your strips on the tops and sides of the door frames. Brushes tacked to the base of a door can help to close up a slightly-draughty threshold. Tube beading for flooring and skirting, finished with a wet finger or sponge, is an hour’s work. Wrap-around sleeves for pipe-work are a cinch to install, and, matched to pipe size, ideal for interior pipes in the attic and around your hot water system.
As you use your boiler, components degrade and soot is deposited on the heat-exchanger surfaces. As a result, the boiler’s efficiency decreases over one season, regardless of any high technical specification. For gas, the savings for servicing a boiler after three years of neglect could be as high as 3% (SEIA). Registered gas installers can be found at www.rgii.ie, oil technicians at www.oftec.com, and trade-finding sites including www.onlinetradesmen.ie can also suggest qualified individuals for any systems. Prices start around €100 for a service without parts. Ask your heating engineer for a run-through of his recommended use of a zoned system, which can be beset by what are termed ‘zone-wars’ if not set correctly.
Think outside the box. Clever, new products with real merit are all around us. The EcoFan, from Caframo, sits on top of your stove to stir the flow of heat to the centre of the room, rather than having it linger on the ceiling. This clever Canadian newcomer works with even the cooler temperature of wood pellet and gas stoves, and generates its own operating power with an ingenious thermo-electric module. From €109, Expert Hardware outlets.
Extra batts of insulation can be laid over existing measures in the attic. Try placing them in the opposite direction to what’s already there. 250mm is a bare minimum depth for any material, with 300mm a better figure to aim for. Ensure you fluff the product up if using fibreglass, and wear full protective clothing where required. A DIY job can be worked out by the metre of materials before you start.
If you are experiencing even intermittent hardship in keeping your house warm this winter, contact your local authority, social welfare office or log onto www.seai.ie to see details of the Warmer Homes Scheme intended to help those in receipt of welfare payments or in financial difficulty. Email: warmerhomes@seai.ie.
Another project to get those fingers going is an old style draught excluder. It is ideal for exterior doors that just won’t seal tight and can be dumped in position once the family are tucked up inside. Have some fun with a remnant of your favourite accent fabric.
WHAT YOU NEED:
- A piece of material slightly longer than the door’s width, but able to tuck into the frame and around 40-50cm wide.
- Needle and thread or a sewing machine. Try fabric glue if you’re allergic to domestic science.
- Stuffing: Rice, dried split peas, lentils or beanbag beads add some weight.
- Decorative touches: For animals, felt trims for scales, feet, tongues etc. Big buttons will do for eyes.
- The leg of a pair of adult or older child’s nylon tights.
1 Iron the material nicely flat.
2 Turn the material wrong side down and fold in half with the pattern inside.
3 Stitch or stick the edges together along the long side
4 Turn right side out and sew one end shut as neatly as possible
5 Use the leg of the tights as a liner. Fill with your chosen stuffing. Tie shut with a good knot.
6 Slip it into the liner and stitch or stick shut at the remaining short end.
A. Simply calculate in metres (width x length x height) of the room you wish to heat. This will give you the room volume in cubic metres. 1kilowat of output will approx heat 25 cubic metres of space. (1kw = 1 electric bar).
A. There are a variety of contemporary stoves available that have a firebox at waist level so no bending is required; the alternative is to place your stove on a plinth to a height that suits.
A. Running a stove with a back boiler can be expensive although anyone with a ready supply of wood should make it a priority.
A. In a lot of cases where there is no chimney-ready made flue, piping can be installed. It is advisable to price such pipe work before purchasing a stove as it often costs more than the stove!
A. All stoves burn at optimum efficiency with closed doors. Opening the doors allows excess air to enter the stove hence accelerating the burn rate of the fuel.
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